Pizza and sliced or slices of pizza are popular food dishes throughout the United States and world. Pizza restaurants and others commonly sell single slices of pizza or miniature pizzas, instead of entire pizza pies, to customers who do not wish to purchase a pizza of substantial size. To create individual slices for retail sale, restaurants typically prepare and bake an entire pizza pie and then cut it into a desired number of individual portions. This presents a number of disadvantages, however. Following this process can waste a substantial amount of food, given the short shelf life of baked pizza products in a commercial sale environment. This process can also result in non-uniform distribution of cheese and toppings on the individual slices, or non-uniformity from slice to slice. Additionally, the substantial mass of an entire pizza pie can adversely affect various baking parameters associated with the single-slice environment, e.g. it can lengthen the baking time required adequately to heat the center of the pie. Other disadvantages will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art.
Attempts to bake pizza slices individually generally have met with difficulty. Overbaking, excessive browning, hardening, or even burning of individually baked slices are common, especially on the sides of the slice. Placing toppings, like cheese, tomato sauce, meats, vegetables, etc., on individual slices is also somewhat difficult, given the relatively small slice sizes desirable for commercial sale. As such, there is clearly a need to provide a means and method to cook, bake, or even just re-heat single slices of pizza easily and more efficiently. This is especially true if the restaurant wants to serve them quickly, like a fast food restaurant.
Another problem that arises with cooking, baking or re-heating single slices of pizza is handling of the single slice of pizza. Unlike full pizza pies, which can be carried on circular baking sheets or the like, single slices of pizza do not have any pizza tins or the like designed to carry or handle the slice of pizza. In addition, picking up a single slice of pizza and retaining the toppings on the single slice of pizza can be difficult. As such, there is clearly a need for a device and/or method for handling single slices of pizza.
The instant disclosure is designed to address at least certain aspects of the problems or needs discussed above by providing a food preparation apparatus for sliced pizza and method of use thereof.